Ilejay is now a member of islander, who’ve just released a video for Darkness, the lead track from second album Power Under Control.

He tells Rolling Stone: “I was totally shocked and scared out of my mind when Synyster Gates called to let me go. I was like, ‘Oh my God – my wife is about to have a baby. How am I going to support my family now?’”

He was offered the role with Islander soon after that band’s frontman Mikey Carvajal heard he’d been fired. The drummer says: “I realised if I joined Islander I’d have an opportunity to help write songs and build something – instead of being on the inside, but at the same time really being on the outside, the way I was with Avenged.”

He’d discovered Islander through Korn bassist Fieldy at a US festival in 2014. “I watched their set and instantly fell in love,” Ilejay says. “The song Counteract especially blew my mind. I was like, ‘Dude, I wish I could sit in on the drums just for that song!’”

Carvajal had often joked that Ilejay would get a call from his band one day. “Finally I called him and I wasn’t joking at all,” he recalls. “I said, ‘You have to come play with us.’”